Emma Watson Talks To W About ‘The Bling Ring,’ Fame and Sex Appeal

Inside the June/July issue of W Magazine, Emma Watson discusses her upcoming film and her past, before and right after scoring Harry Potter. And on The Bling Ring, Watson said, in the most demure way possible, that she was actually too classy to understand why her character would want people to see her bra.

In related news, Emma told reporters at Cannes that she watched “a lot of ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ and ‘The Hills,’” to understand the psychology of Nicki/Alexis Neiers. She added that she “thought a lot about what her parents must have been like.”

I find this weird because Pretty Wild (with the real-life Alexis Neiers and her mother)is on Netflix streaming.

(Maybe she’s not allowed to say that was her real point of reference for legal reasons?) The dynamic between Kris Jenner and Kim Kardashian is not exactly the same. Just watch. You’ll see.

On her love of American cinema (Pretty Woman) and the limelight at a young age: I was 7, which was way, way too young. That was when I started loving Julia Roberts and American movies. As a child, I loved being onstage. I loved singing, I loved the lights, I loved the adrenaline. I even loved learning lines. I was completely obsessive. A friend of my mother’s found a tape of me auditioning for Hermione. I wanted to get really, really good at my lines. There was reel after reel, take after take, of me doing the same thing.

Speaking of America….: I’ve always loved America. When we came here with Harry Potter, everyone was so warm. Eventually, all of my friends were American, and I think that’s why I was attracted to playing Americans, even extreme ones like Nicki.Auditioning for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at age 9: I did eight auditions, and I would literally sit by the telephone in my house and wait for each call. When they had me in for the ninth audition, I was like, Wow, nine! They called me into the producer David Heyman’s office, and he said I was the “preferred” candidate for the role. Before I could obsess over what “preferred” meant, they took a photograph of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and me, and it was broadcast on the Internet that we had been cast in Harry Potter. By the time I got back to my house, there was press waiting outside. We moved straight into a hotel.

Being a sex symbol is weird: I’ve never wanted to grow up too fast: I wanted to wear a sports bra until I was 22! The allure of being sexy never really held any excitement for me. I’ve never been in a terrible rush to be seen as a woman.

The Bling Ring wardrobe: Who wouldn’t love to go to work in Uggs and very low-slung tracksuit bottoms? The iconic detail of Nicki is her tramp stamp. It’s a lotus flower, a Buddhist-like symbol just above her butt crack. Really classy! [Laughs] And at one point I told the costume designer, “You can see my bra strap in this top; shouldn’t we pin it?” And she said, “No, sweetie – Nicki is all about her bra strap showing.” I was like, Right, okay, different mind-set.Her Hollywood crush: My cinematic crush has been pretty much the same since I was 12: Kevin Costner. I met him in an elevator the other day, and I couldn’t even speak. He said hello, because he is lovely like that, and I couldn’t say anything back

Being famous: I lived in denial for as long as I possibly could. Until the age of 18, I would take the Oxford Tube, which is a public bus. Then it got to the point where the fact that I was on the bus would spread from one end to the other. I’d think, Why am I doing this to myself? Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn’t advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn’t wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.